The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  “We don’t work as a couple,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Not like this.”

  She studied Justin’s face, waiting desperately for a reaction, but it didn’t change.

  “I love you.” The words rang out in the cold winter air, through the tall, dark skeletons of the trees. “And I think we both know that you deserve to get out of here, without anyone holding you back.”

  Harper stared at him, tears freezing on the edges of her eyelashes. “I’m sorry. I wish—”

  “No, you don’t.”

  His smile made her break inside, gave her a massive twinge of phantom pain. And she understood that he’d been expecting this on some level. That he was willing to bear it. She hugged him, sniffling against his chest, and he held her as she cried, until at last, she was finally ready to let him go.

  One day this would fade. They would grow up and move on and he would be a distant memory, or maybe even a friend.

  But that did not stop the unbearable sadness she felt now. So she did not walk home after Justin left—instead, she took the familiar path through the woods and up the Saunderses’ snow-covered front steps. When Violet opened the door and saw the tears on her face, she hugged her without speaking.

  “Boys,” Harper managed to choke out, and Violet yanked her up to the spare room where she had lived for a few weeks, a room that Violet had told her in no uncertain terms she would always be welcome in.

  “You can cry as much as you want,” Violet told her as they sat cross-legged on the floor, Orpheus prowling at the edges of the woolen rug, his stripy gray fur gleaming in the light of the candles Violet had lit. They were a reminder of those desperate few hours they’d all spent together at Isaac’s apartment, a night where Harper thought the world might really end. “This is a no-judgment zone.”

  “I just hate this,” Harper said. “That I know it’s right, and it hurts anyway.”

  “Of course it hurts right now,” Violet said as the candles flickered and the world around them flickered, too. “But it’s not going to hurt you forever.”

  “You really think so?”

  Violet smiled at her. “I know so. You were strong enough to turn him down. That means you’re strong enough to get over him, too.”

  Harper leaned her head against Violet’s shoulder, fighting back tears. But they were not the tears she’d come here to cry.

  Violet was right, she realized. She was Harper Carlisle. The girl who’d raised a stone army. The girl who had helped save them all. The girl who could finally go home, the girl who was soft and strong and a little bit older than she’d been a few months ago.

  And there was a future spiraling wide in front of her, filled to the brim with endless possibilities.

  The mausoleum was quiet. Isaac stood in the shadow of his family’s ashes, staring at the plaques that reached up to the ceiling, and felt the full weight of the last few years bear down upon his shoulders.

  “I think it should be you,” Gabriel said from beside him.

  Isaac turned. They’d both dressed up for this, ties and sport coats that didn’t fit either of them right, and it was hard not to feel like they were both wearing a costume. Kids playing at adulthood, grasping at something they were never quite going to be ready for. He’d left his collar open deliberately, the slash of his scar worn not proudly, but honestly.

  “Are you sure?” Isaac asked, the words echoing off the walls. His hands no longer sparked with power now, and although he’d expected to feel nothing but relief when it was gone, the truth was that he missed it a little. But it had been worth giving it up for this, for peace. It was the only good sacrifice his family had ever made.

  “Yeah,” Gabriel said, handing him the small, unmarked urn that contained their mother’s ashes. “I’m sure.”

  The decision to take Maya Sullivan off life support had not been an easy one. But it had been easier to make in the aftermath of all of this, with the full knowledge that no one would ever have to suffer the same way she had again. The truth was, she had died on Isaac’s ritual day, but only now was he ready or able to admit that to himself. It hadn’t been her in that hospital bed anymore, nor was it truly her inside that urn, and yet Isaac still grieved anyway.

  One more loss for him to bear. But at least he did not need to bear it alone.

  Isaac swallowed hard and lifted Maya’s urn into the drawer beside his brothers, then slid it carefully shut. A shiny new plaque winked beside Caleb’s and Isaiah’s.

  MAYA SULLIVAN

  He’d wondered if it was right, burying her here, but it felt good to know they were all next to each other in some way. His eyes slid to the top of the mausoleum, where they’d removed Richard Sullivan’s plaque.

  “What an asshole,” he muttered, staring at it.

  “Tell me about it,” Gabriel said grimly. Isaac had only found out after the dust had settled that Richard was the one behind Gabriel’s sudden need to run away. He’d cornered him at the Pathways Inn and told him that Juniper and Augusta were lying about the truth behind Four Paths, that there was no way to fix the corruption. Gabriel, panicked, had listened—he’d recognized Richard as Justin and May’s father and figured he knew the truth. Isaac understood why Gabriel had bolted. Growth was hard. What mattered was that he’d come back.

  It was Richard’s bloodthirst that had started all of this. Isaac knew that now. But against all odds, they had ended it.

  “I miss her.” It was the only eulogy he could muster. “I miss all of them.”

  “So do I,” Gabriel said. “But I think they’d be proud of us.”

  His brother’s arm slid around his shoulder, and as they stood together, inside a monument to false gods and imaginary monsters, Isaac felt a bone-deep sense of relief.

  All four of them were waiting for Isaac and Gabriel in his apartment. Harper nosing through his books, May organizing his kitchen, and Justin and Violet sitting on the couch, clearly in the middle of some kind of argument as he swung open the door.

  “I told you this wasn’t necessary,” Isaac protested weakly, unsure which of them he was talking to. They’d understood when he explained that he just wanted the funeral to be him and Gabriel, but all of them had insisted they help out afterward, and they knew Isaac too well for him to effectively disagree. It was highly annoying.

  “We’re your friends,” May said acridly, sticking her head out of the kitchen. “Now come on. We’re kidnapping you both.”

  “I’m not sure it’s kidnapping if you tell someone you’re doing it first,” Harper said mildly. “Or if they agreed to it beforehand.”

  “Also,” Violet said, jabbing a thumb at Gabriel, “I’m pretty sure he could take all of us if he wanted to.”

  “Hey!” Justin said, while Gabriel simultaneously said, “I absolutely could.”

  “Semantics,” May said, marching past them all and flinging open the door.

  It was freezing cold outside—December in upstate New York was not exactly beach weather—but the exercise made it a little easier to bear. Perhaps it was overkill, to destroy the altar his family had kept in their backyard. But Isaac did not care. First they crushed it with a sledgehammer, smashing it one by one as the others cheered until there was nothing left but bits of crumbled stone. To celebrate, they carted over some kindling from the formerly corrupted trees and made a bonfire in the ashes of his family home. It was undoubtedly dangerous, but Isaac couldn’t find it in him to be concerned.

  He watched the flames crackling and exhaled slowly, his breath visible in the air for a brief moment before it vanished into the column of smoke heading up toward the sky.

  “I kind of get it now,” Violet said thoughtfully from beside him. “Property destruction is deeply cathartic.”

  Isaac couldn’t hold back his laugh. “I can’t do it with just my hands anymore, unfortunately.”

  “Somehow I think you’ll endure,” Violet said, knocking her shoulder against his.

  Isaac snaked an arm around
her back, and she leaned into him, her head nestled against his shoulder. “Somehow, I think I will.”

  “I can feel you smiling,” her voice said, muffled. “You really are soft, huh?”

  “You can’t feel someone smiling.”

  “Aren’t you, though?”

  He laughed, and after a moment she joined in too.

  Four Paths had done its best to break him, but he was still here. And he would make the most of this chance he’d been given. The brother who’d come back, the friends who’d stuck around, the girl beside him, just as warm and comforting as the bonfire that flickered around the ashes of his past.

  He would never forget what had happened to him here. But it did not control him any longer.

  He would heal, and he would grow, and he would live.

  EPILOGUE

  There is something in the forest.

  It has been there for May Hawthorne’s entire life, but things have changed. She and her family still guard it. Always have, always will. But what they guard it from now are people like Richard Sullivan. People like their ancestors.

  People who would seek to take the forest’s power and bend it to their will.

  The story the founders tell is simple. There was a monster, and now there isn’t anymore. Everyone is fine. Everyone is safe.

  And it’s as true as most stories are, which is to say that it is and it isn’t.

  It’s true that there is no more Gray. No more bodies. No corrupted trees, apart from the ones that surface sometimes in her nightmares.

  Instead, the magic is back where it has always belonged: In the rustle of the leaves as they fall from the trees. In the hawthorn tree’s half-shut eye. In a brief moment when May turns her head and feels something watching her, feels that it is grateful—and then it’s gone.

  It lingers in the undead cat that lives inside the town boundaries, still prowling at Violet’s side, in the ruins that Isaac and his brother have set about eradicating, burying their past selves in the dirt.

  May knows that it will take a long time for trees to grow, but sometimes she goes out into the forest and helps them anyway. It feels good to get some dirt under her fingernails every once in a while. And it feels good when all five of them show up at parties and the town starts expecting them to arrive together, those founder kids always hanging out, because old habits die hard.

  Augusta finds the whole family a therapist. May is skeptical at first, but it helps to talk to a stranger about her father, even though they skirt around some of the details. It allows the three of them to find the words they need to start healing.

  She watches her friends get into college and wonders if they’ll keep their promise to remember this once they leave. And then, in late spring, all four of them surprise her.

  “It’s everything we could find about the founders,” Violet says, pulling a massive binder out of her tote bag and handing it to May. They’re sitting in the forest, the five of them; reading or on their phones, it doesn’t matter, because they all like to be there. It’s where they feel safe.

  May flips the binder open to the first page. It has papers from every family, all put together; it tells the truth, or at least as much of the truth as they can manage, through pictures and letters and handwritten stories and songs. And as May clutches the binder close to her chest, she understands why they have given it to her: because someone has to tell the story. Of the founders who became a monster, and the founders who finally laid it to rest.

  She sits beneath the hawthorn tree that night, the Deck of Omens heavy in her hands. The tree itself is healed but scarred, deep divots in the trunk where the veins twisted through it. It will never be the same again, but it still lives, and that is all May could have hoped for.

  She hasn’t dared to touch the cards since her ritual all those months ago, not quite ready to think of how that connection between herself and the forest has flickered out.

  But she is finally ready to let go.

  May takes a deep breath and begins to shuffle as the branches wave above her head. The air smells of springtime and hope, of new beginnings.

  And then she feels it: a door creaking open in her mind, something wordless surging through it. It sounds different from the voice she’s heard before, and yet she still recognizes it immediately.

  It is the forest she loves so much. It is her birthright. It is her home.

  The hawthorn’s slow heartbeat courses through her. And, one by one, the cards begin to disappear.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Deck of Omens was a challenging and personal book to write. I’m so grateful to everyone who supported me along the way.

  Kelly Sonnack: Thank you for your tireless championing of the Devouring Gray duology and my career as a whole. You’re an agenting superstar. Thanks as well to the entire rest of the team at Andrea Brown Lit, especially Maura Buckley, and to Taryn Fagerness for handling all things foreign sales.

  Hannah Allaman: thank you, thank you, THANK YOU a thousand times over for being a complete dream of an editor. You make me a better writer, and you always seem to know exactly what my books need to take them to the next level. It’s an honor to work with you.

  Thank you as well to Emily Meehan, Christine Saunders and Seale Ballenger, Danielle DiMartino and Elke Villa, Dina Sherman, Jackie De Leo, Tyler Nevins, Melissa Lee, Guy Cunningham and Meredith Jones, Sara Liebling, and everyone else on the amazing Hyperion team. Special thanks to Mike Heath for the gorgeous cover, and to Shea Centore for the interior art. You’ve all been wonderful to work with.

  On the UK side, a massive thank-you to the entire team at Titan Books, especially Lydia Gittins, Sam Matthews, George Sandison, Natasha MacKenzie, and Sarah Mathers.

  Amanda Foody: You were there for all of it—and from endless texts and phone calls to crashing in each other’s living rooms to panicked airport brainstorming sessions, you’ve never wavered. Thank you for helping me bring the TDG duology into the world, and for the gift of your incredible friendship.

  Rory Power: Any amount of gratitude seems too small for how much you helped me unravel this book and put it back together, but thank you anyway. You are brilliant and kind and thoughtful, and I am deeply lucky that you’re part of my life.

  To the cult: Thank you for your tireless love and support. A good critique partner is hard to find—let alone nineteen. I’m so fortunate to have an entire crew of wonderful people in my corner.

  To my writerly friends: Thank you for commiserating and hand-holding and sending appropriate memes at the perfect time. This industry is much brighter with all of you in it.

  Kati Gardner: Thank you for your help on both TDG and TDO—it was invaluable and deeply appreciated.

  Andrea, Louis, and Joanna: I’d make an ill-advised deal in the forest with you three any day. (Who’s to say we haven’t already?)

  To the readers who found the woods kids out in the wild: Thank you so much for your support.

  To Nova: Please continue taking long naps. You are an aspirational being. You’re also a cat, so please stop jumping on my keyboard while I’m doing important things. (I know you won’t.)

  And to Trevor, who came home from work multiple times to find me lying on the floor, mumbling about plot holes and character arcs: You were right. I finished the book, and I love it. I think that means you get to say you told me so.

  Discover Your Next Great Read

  Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors.

  Tap here to learn more.

  Bring the YA (book) party to your inbox with NOVL:

  theNOVL.com/enewsletter

  Booked all week.

  theNOVL.com

  Instagram.com/TheNovl

  Twitter.com/TheNovl

  Facebook.com/TheNovl

 

 

  n Archive.